A Sea-Grape Tree

A woman searches for a fresh start on a remote Caribbean island in this sequel to Rosamond Lehmann's classic The Ballad and the Source

The year is 1933. After a heart-wrenching betrayal by her married lover, Rebecca Landon leaves London for a tiny island in the Caribbean. There, she meets a colony of expatriates, including the voluble Captain Cunningham and his wife, Ellie, who were the first white settlers on the isle. She also meets Johnny, a married former pilot who was crippled in the war and now lives as a recluse. Drawn together by their mutual pain and sorrow, he and Rebecca are soon swept into a passionate affair.

But there's yet another presence on the island: the spirit of Sibyl Jardine, a scandalous beauty who fascinated Rebecca as a child and has left an unforgettable mark on the woman Rebecca has become. Mrs. Jardine also came to this remote island to escape, and before she died, she forged a powerful connection with Johnny. Does her ghost still cast a shadow over the island's inhabitants? What is her unfinished business and what is she trying to communicate to Rebecca and Johnny? Or is it Rebecca who is trying to communicate something, driven by her own need for closure?

This is a poignant, uplifting novel about the lives we leave behind, our eternal quest for love, and the answers we seek when our faith is shaken.

"Full of her sensibility, her funniness, her own particular acumen. It is also beautifully written and devised." -Elizabeth Jane Howard

Rosamond Lehmann (1901-1990) was born on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral, in Buckinghamshire, England, the second of four children. In 1927, a few years after graduating from the University of Cambridge, she published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to critical acclaim and instantaneous celebrity. Lehmann continued to write and publish between 1930 and 1976, penning works including The Weather in the Streets, The Ballad and the Source, and the short memoir The Swan in the Evening. Lehmann was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1982 and remains one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century.